Dear Neighbor,
It's been a busy month, and a long time since I wrote. The last newsletter was about a conversation in Cambridge about the graduation requirement. Better late than never, letting you know about an official listening session tonight.
LISTENING SESSION TONIGHT ON HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATION REQUIREMENTS
Do we need new statewide high school graduation requirements?
Tonight at Somerville High School, the governor's High School Graduation Council, is holding a "listening" session at which you can speak your mind about that. 5 to 7pm, 81 Highland Ave. (Registration is optional.)
Last November, the voters eliminated the requirement that students pass the MCAS to get their diplomas by passing Question 2, 59 to 41 percent. I supported Question 2 because I think the laser focus on MCAS scores did a lot of harm to our students' high school education and virtually no good.
Now, local school districts decide whether students have earned their diplomas based on the courses they've passed, and the state has listed required courses. Should there be new statewide requirements? The governor appointed a council to make recommendations by December.
Here's what I'm planning to say:
There’s a story about a man who was looking for his car keys at night under a lamp post. He knows he didn’t lose them there, but the light makes it easier to search.
For more than 20 years, this strategy has described our state’s approach to deciding whether a student is competent to graduate from high school. Nobody really thinks that a standardized test in math and English accurately summarizes what students need to get from their high school education, but standardized tests are easy to score.
That man didn’t find his keys, and we wound up distorting what high schools teach to line up with what the test can test.
The 1993 Education Reform Act actually prescribed a better approach to finding those keys.
“As much as is practicable, especially in the case of students whose performance is difficult to assess using conventional methods, such [assessment] instruments shall include consideration of work samples, projects and portfolios, and shall facilitate authentic and direct gauges of student performance.” That’s what the law said.
But three years later, in 1996, Governor Weld appointed John Silber to chair the state Board of Education and they decided that “authentic and direct gauges of student performance” weren’t practicable at all. So instead, they instituted a standardized test.
For decades, they held onto that test to decide who could graduate, until the voters made them let go of it last November.
When New York State decided to stop relying on their Regents exams as a graduation requirement, state officials held more than 80 meetings around the state where teachers, students, parents, and others could say what they thought it was important for students to learn.
Communication skills were high on the list. So was financial literacy. But the main things people – including students – thought it was important for students to learn amounted to the skills of adult life. Skills like how to take the initiative and turn an idea into reality. Critical thinking. How to work with other people.
These hearings are a step in the right direction.
Citizens for Public Schools is organizing a series of six forums around the state – a mini-version of what New York did. At the forums, most of the time is used for small group discussions about these basic questions: What do students need to get out of school? How can they be assessed to see if they learned those important, adult-life skills. So far, the top priorities are very similar to what came out of New York’s much more extensive process.
None of those things are measured by a standardized test. Even communication skills aren’t measured well by the English MCAS. Did you make a convincing argument? MCAS doesn’t know. Are you an effective speaker? MCAS doesn’t even try to find out.
But life skills are reflected in a student’s “work samples, projects and portfolios,” what we often call “performance assessments,” which is a major part of what the Mass Consortium for Innovative Education Assessment is working on.
Currently, state law puts the competency determination in the hands of local school districts, because the voters said so. Let’s leave it there for now. It will take time for the Department of Education - and school districts - to develop ways to measure the important skills we want our students to learn. There’s been important progress coming out of the New York Performance Standards Consortium, MCIEA, and other places. Let’s give that a chance.
But let’s not go back to the lamp post. Our keys aren’t there.
Hope to write about the budget and other news soon!
Stay in touch,
Pat Jehlen